The Party’s Over

Heidi Fleiss was back in court Friday. She wore a short black skirt with a matching double-breasted coat. There was a slight run above the heel on her right nylon stocking. Such sartorial details once seemed important, back in those fun and fantastic early days of Heidi Fleiss’ upside-down Cinderella story.

Back at her first court appearance, for instance, it was dutifully reported that Fleiss came dressed in a Norma Kamali mini-dress--the most conservative, she confided, in her closet--and that she had summoned her hairdresser to her Benedict Canyon home for a quick, pre-arraignment trim. The media turnout was extraordinary, creating a memorable image of this reed-thin young woman in ridiculous sunglasses, bobbing in a rough sea of cameras and microphones. And thrilled to the core.

“Sex sells,” she later told an interviewer back then, flashing what was recorded as a “lopsided smile.”

And why not?

Back then--two years ago, when the story first broke--everybody was having a ball. Even Heidi. This was a fairy tale, a quiz show and an adult-rated segment of “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” all piled together in one salacious heap. Just whose names were jotted down in that black book Heidi kept waving around? Movie moguls? Actors? Corporate powerbrokers? How much did they pay and what, exactly, did they want? Details! Details!

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Heidi’s own character--the wild child of a doctor and schoolteacher; the Hollywood climber who partied with Mick and Jack and elbowed her way to the top of her trade--was of mild interest, but definitely not the main draw. This is a point that perhaps she missed, back when the agents were talking million-dollar autobiography and movies-of-the-week, minimum, on every network.

No, it was not Heidi herself, but the whiff of good old-fashioned Hollywood decadence that attracted the cameras. This was a story that smacked of the rare good stuff, the randy habits movie publicists are paid to keep out of print. This wasn’t blather about brown rice charity feeds or stars who adopt giraffes. This was Hollywood with its pants down, a reassurance that, despite all those Harvard MBAs infiltrating studios, Babylon lives. It struck at that point where public fascination with movie people merges with public contempt for the same. It was feeding time for locusts.

And with the cameras came the prosecutors, state and federal. It was Heidi Fleiss’ bad luck to stick her head into the justice maw at a time when the Los Angeles district attorney’s office was on a losing streak in high-profile cases--and in no mood to be humiliated again. This was no time to flaunt and tease with winks and whispers, to invite reporters into her home for semi-confidential chats, to play for the cameras. It was simple physics: As Fleiss’ infamy rose, her prospects diminished.

She did not seem to grasp that then, and it’s doubtful she understands it even today. Just last week she was taking jabs at the prosecutors who want very much to put her away for a long time: “It’s like sex is the worst crime on earth. This is ridiculous. No one lost money. No one got hurt.” At least not yet.

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There were maybe a dozen reporters in the courtroom Friday, all that could be spared from the O.J. brigade. They spread out comfortably and told jokes on themselves about playing for the B-team. Heidi sat with a few relatives in the front row, kneading her hands. A courthouse gadfly approached and asked for an autograph; Fleiss happily obliged. Other than that, she was left alone. Nobody, it seems, has anything they want to ask Heidi Fleiss anymore; even if she started naming names from her black book, who at this point would publish them?

Fleiss was to be sentenced on her state pandering conviction, which requires a prison term of roughly three years, minimum. The attorneys were fighting for one last delay. They wanted more time to negotiate a plea on federal tax evasion charges. The judge relented and granted a postponement until Wednesday. Fleiss turned to the gallery, smiled, and mouthed a “whew.” See, she seemed to say. Her luck was holding. The party wasn’t over yet.

She was sad to watch, this Cinderella who can’t read the clock. Fleiss is headed for hard time, real soon, in a bad place where no one wears Kamali dresses. That it is not fair seems beyond obvious. As crimes go, hers wasn’t much. She catered to the sexual kinks of powerful men with disposable cash. These men won’t face cameras or prosecutors. Unpublished whispers aside, they will remain anonymous: life will go on, happily ever after. But not for Heidi. It was all too much fun, and somebody must pay. She is that somebody.